A blog about one man's journey through code… and some pictures of the Peak District

Web API Routing – The Basics

Working with API projects, it’s easy to miss some key rules about the routing. This post is basically the result of some that I missed, and subsequent the investigation. It covers some very basic routing rules, and it certainly not intended to be an exhaustive guide.

.Net Framework

Starting with a .Net Framework Web API, let’s create a new web app:

And add a new controller:

Here’s the code for the controller; as you will see, it’s massively complex, but the good news is that you only need to pay attention to the name of the action, and the code inside it:

How did I know that was the URL? It’s magic, and you can buy some of that magic by sending a cheque for the low, low price of $25 to the address shown at the bottom of the screen.

Actually, it’s defined in WebApiConfig.cs:

Parameters

Where there is more than a single function, one surprising (to me) feature is that the parameters that it accepts is more important to the routing than the name of the controller. Here’s a second action with a parameter:

The default implementation is provided by the ApiControllerActionSelector class. To select an action, it looks at the following:
• The HTTP method of the request.
• The “{action}” placeholder in the route template, if present.
• The parameters of the actions on the controller.

So, if we add the {action} placeholder, that ensures that it uses the correct method: